1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an issuing system including a plurality of issuing machines for selling, generating, and printing newly-issued securities or fixed rate financing instruments that include selected features of common stock and bonds, and a method for establishing a market with the system. In particular, each of the issuing machines can print unmodifiable and/or unforgeable hardcopy documents or securities, and scan/identify whether a served hardcopy document is a printed unmodifiable and/or unforgeable hardcopy documents or securities previously generated by an issuing machine of the system.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Stock certificates are a well-known type of certificate of securities that represent the positions or rights of stockowners. A business operator issues stock certificates that represent the positions or rights of investors in return for acquiring funds from the investors. Those who purchased stock certificates (i.e., stockholders) are allowed to participate in the operation of the company that issued the stock certificates based on the positions and rights given to them in return. In other words, stockholders can attend stockholders meetings, participate in voting, and demand dividends from the company that issued stock certificates.
Moreover, stockholders are allowed to sell the stock certificates to third parties. By selling the stocks at prices exceeding the original purchase prices, they can earn profits that are equal to the differences between them.
Bonds are another type of well-known securities that are issued by national or local governments, entities established based on special laws, or private enterprises for obligations they have to the public as a whole. Bonds are characterized in that they have predetermined redemption dates, after which the bond issuers are to pay to the bond owners corresponding principals and interests. Bond owners are also allowed to sell bonds at prices exceeding the original purchase prices and earn profits that are equal to the differences between them.
However, a business operator sometimes may not be able to acquire sufficient funds only by stock issues. Moreover, by issuing bonds, a business operator becomes obligated to pay the principals and interests after the redemption dates, so that bond issuing results in a high burden for a business owner.
U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0107766 provides a financial instrument certificate purchasing system for issuing, transferring and redeeming financial certificates which are representative of underlying publicly-traded property. The system permits an individual to gift a third party with a certificate which represents a company's security or other financial instrument, while not itself consisting of the financial instrument. However, the system does not sell, generate or print the financial instrument itself. In addition, the certificates are ordered via a personal computer, rather than any publicly-available standing-alone issuing machine like an ATM.
The existing “online trading terminals” available to the general public is merely a computer terminal at which a person can do on-line securities trading. The online trading terminal only deals with virtual (online) resources and prints paper copies of online transaction receipts, but does not print any unmodifiable and/or unforgeable securities. In addition, the online trading terminal does not re-circulate/recycle any printed unmodifiable and/or unforgeable securities.
The conventional ATM machine only dispenses money and collects money/checks, rather than dispensing and collecting certificates of securities. Some ATM machines, such as the one described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,981,637, automatically check and ensure that the money dispensed or collected is valid (i.e., not a forgery) by scanning and trying to identify the kind and amount of the paper money. However, these ATM machine only re-circulate the paper money by storing and then dispensing per-printed paper money (by a government), but not printing new unmodifiable and/or unforgeable paper money. In addition, these ATM machine only take limited kinds of paper money, usually of the same currency issued by an identical government such that it can use data stored in its own memory for authentication without accessing a central server.
There are money changers (e.g., devices that accept money bills in vending machines), which have sensors that look for certain features on the inserted bills (e.g., ultra-violet threads, particular microprinting, etc.) and check the validity of bills and distinguish bills of different sizes.
Up to this point, the circulation of actual securities is restricted only to be sold or exchanged at specified locations, such as branch offices of financial institutions, such as a bank or a securities brokerage. If one party desires to sell a hardcopy security to another, the transaction of the hardcopy securities would have to be completed at one of these branch offices. The branch office can check the authenticity of the hardcopy and record the serial number of the security and its new owner. A transaction of a counterfeit hardcopy can be detected and stopped by a person via checking a global (across all locations) database of these documents and transactions.
There is a need for a securities issuing system with a plurality of issuing machines placed at various convenient locations to for potential customers to offer to buy securities, to buy securities, to transfer bought securities to a depository, to print out the bought unforgeable hardcopy securities, and to recycle the printed unforgeable hardcopy securities back into the system.
Beside securities, there are other unmodifiable and/or unforgeable documents, such as postage stamps, anti-counterfeit stickers and/or packages, paper money, checks, banknotes, commercial papers, passports, driver's licenses, identity cards, smart cards, credit cards, academic transcripts, etc. protected by different techniques including: (1) Special paper: heavy paper, perhaps with colored or forensic fibers, or transparent windows, etc; (2) Watermarks: pattern impressed on paper by varying paper density; (3) Microprinting: text that is too small to be accurately re-producible; the text may include information specific to the security (e.g., serial number); (4) Holograms; (5) Metallic or UV sensitive threads embedded in paper; or other high-resolution printing techniques. The techniques involve the use of technology that is not available to the general public, or is available only at prohibitive cost. Some techniques (e.g., high-resolution printing) increase the cost of the printer. Some techniques (e.g., special paper) increase the cost of the materials.
There is a need for a cost effective method to print an unmodifiable and/or unforgeable document that are not reproducible with conventional copiers.